What’s the most effective way to develop future CIOs in your organization?

One of my direct reports sent me something when he was at a presentation through the University of California (UC) system. The use case that they presented was another college that had essentially architected the same solution we did. So I forwarded his email to the new CIO of the UC system and said, "We've done this here on our campus. Let me know if you want to share it with the system."

My direct report is going through Toastmasters and has indicated he wants to get better at public speaking. So I said to him, "How's Toastmasters going for you? You'd better brush up, because I just sent this to the head of the UC system and you might have a lot of people coming your way." I totally set him up, but what better way for him to learn? Techniques like that are effective.

What I’ve found effective is making mentorship programmatic on your team, so that anybody that is a new or emerging leader partners with a mentor who is more senior than them. Their mentor could be within their own group or outside of it, but it's their responsibility to find a mentor to sync up with who is outside of their chain of command. That gives you a fresh perspective as somebody that's new to dealing with different scenarios.

I don't think there's an easy answer. It's a partnership: Leaders have a responsibility to ensure we are making time to coach and help emerging leaders. And on the other side, those individuals need to have the desire and commitment to absorb that coaching and convert it into a real opportunity for themselves. If that alignment isn't there, it doesn't work. I can show up to a meeting, but if there's no one else on the other side, I can't do much else.